Why Hire An Orthodontic Marketing Professional?

Cosmetic dentistry is a particularly profitable business these days. There are some procedures that are worth $5,000 or more. Given that, it may be worth investing in proper digital marketing. At least, it’s worth investing in should you want to gain more of your city’s marketplace.

There are a number of orthodontists (and other professionals, for that matter) who will complain online about how little digital marketing helped their business. Unfortunately, what they fail to realize is that you can’t hire a general digital marketing firm for a niche market. You have to hire a company that knows your business. Otherwise, how will they be able to sell it?

We’ve worked with a number of Orthos, which has allowed us to learn quite a bit. For example, one of the primary groups of people searching for cosmetic dentistry information online is mothers. Generally, they’re wanting to find the right orthodontist for their child. And like most mothers taking care of a child, this makes them want to do their research.

There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that mothers will research online, find the websites of top ranking orthodontists, and then insist on setting up a few consultations once they’ve narrowed the field. A generalized digital marketing firm may not realize what a prominent market mothers can be. By contrast, we’ve worked with enough Orthodontists to not only know about the market, but also how to reach them.

When a mother lands on a website, especially when they’re looking for information to help their child, they tend to have rather high expectations. Naturally, they expect the website to be modern and to be updated regularly. That’s a simple necessity of any site on the internet these days. If the website isn’t current and easy to use, they won’t even make it to the About page. This is what you want to avoid, since that means they won’t go looking for what kind of doctor (as well as what kind of person) the Orthodontist is. When they do make it to the About page, they look for the kind of information you might expect. How long has the Orthodontist been practicing? What does their continuing education resume look like? Once they know about the Orthodontist, they tend to look up information on the staff. After all, they want to know about everyone who’ll be working on their child.

Check your website. Does the content and design truly showcase your brand? We’ve created a number of incredible website designs by forsaking common templates and choosing to instead build the site on the same theme of inside the practice. So when a mother finds the website, they can get an instant sense of what the Orthodontist’s office is like, not just by words but by the overall feel. Bland, generic websites are, tautologically, bland and generic. When the site has no personality, people will presume your practice has no personality.

Location Is Vital

Anyone taking care of a child has a full time job. This means a mother is even less likely to want to make a 30 minute drive once a month than a childless person. That said, if a mother finds an Orthodontist that looks promising via their online search, and has a consultation that runs smoothly, then they might decide that the drive is worth it for their child. This means you have an opportunity. You might be further away than a regular dentist, but you offer something they can’t.

This does mean your website has to make it quick and easy to figure out exactly where your office is located. The harder it is to find information, the less likely anyone, mother or not, will stick around to search for it. This means your site needs a map, as well as directions, on every single page. By ensuring a map is on every page, you’ll ensure they see it no matter what page they land on from their Google search.

Get Found Using SEO

Having a modern, content filled website is a great first step. However, it’s only the first step. It’s useless if people can’t find you.

This means you need an orthodontic-specific SEO firm. Similar to doing web design, a specialized SEO firm is going to have a solid grasp of your target market, and thus be able to do the most for your Google search ranking. Google search traffic can double or even triple the number of customers you get, so SEO is incredibly important.

If you need to figure out the ROI, you can do so rather easily. After all, you offer braces. There’s traditional braces, or there’s Invisalign. There may be some choices in metal braces, but even that’s limited. This means that the revenue for each patient is rather consistent.

This consistency makes it a good comparison for ROI, which can be 10:1 or even better.

The most vital part of SEO is ensuring your website is properly optimized. This can be difficult, since Google changes their search algorithms on a fairly regular basis. When your website is outdated, it’s likely to use SEO tactics that are outdated, as well. If you’ve been wondering why your website isn’t getting the same number of hits it used to get, that could be the answer.

Content is also incredibly critical. It needs to be valuable content, as well. Valuable to both the visitor, and to Google. This wraps back around to why we work so hard to develop websites according to themes instead of using templates. If the content on your site is no different from the content on other sites, it’s called “duplicate content”. Google tends to give lower priority to duplicate content, sometimes discarding it all together. And if a mathematical equation can pick up on that, your visitor surely will.

Plain and simple, if you want to generate business via the internet, you need an Orthodontic Marketing Specialist.